How Sakura Con is more of a church than some churches

After a long absence of many years, I had the privilege of attending Sakura Con 2015. Sakura Con is an anime/manga convention I was exposed to in high school during my now embarrassing infatuation with Hellsing (which, in my defense, has fantastical art). Though Sakura Con has been and always will be primarily a celebration of Japanese culture, the primary appeal for me is cosplay, the practice of creating costumes designed to make you look like a fictional character of your choice. It need not be anime or manga based, it could be anything. This year, I was the tragic Booker Dewitt of Bioshock Infinite (a game with such depth that I would love to devote an entire blog entry to it), as well as Oswald of Carim of Dark Souls. I even threw together a Vincent Law of Ergo Proxy for the masquerade ball.

But while the cosplay was excellent this year (it's always such a delight to see what people come up with), other aspects of con were emphasized to me. One of the most magical things about con is that everyone becomes approachable. You can hold an amiable conversation with anyone, as if you were friends, no matter who or what you are outside of con. I chatted with strangers for hours, and I enjoyed it. Even though I am an introvert typically drained by prolonged exposure to people, I was charged by the atmosphere. The sense of brotherhood was tangible, and while there were those who preferred to remain quiet and reserved, everyone was friendly with one another. The details of our lives were unimportant, except that we were all of us nerds who delighted in nerdy things. Sakura Con is one of the largest conventions on the west coast, and it draws thousands upon thousands of people from all over the world; inevitably, you run across someone with a unique shared interest. "You like this too? I thought I was the only one!" For the most part, it's a time of tearing down the walls we erect to prevent unwanted social contact and enjoying one another's company. It's about sharing in nerdiness.

This being said, Sakura Con (I can only speak for this con, having attended few others) has spawned cultural practices that are observed each year. This was my first con since going to college, and I found that my insight into things had drastically changed since my first con experiences, and I began to notice and appreciate different things that were always there.

Chief among my examples is the practice of the hugging circle. Every year in the courtyard, a large crowd gathers, usually at least 60 people. Some of the people form a circle around the others, and empty cans and bottles are placed in the center. A person inside the circle kicks a can, and whomever the bottle points to on the outside of the circle is then approached and hugged by the kicker. After the hug, the two exchange places. The person then stands on the edge of the circle until a new kicker's bottle points to the them. They then hug and the first kicker returns to the merry frenzy of the center, looking for a bottle to kick. It's a very simple dance of exitus and redditus that perpetuates itself endlessly.

This might not sound like much of a game, but I spent hours playing it. Along with a new friend who had become dear to me in a short amount of time, I hugged what must have been hundreds of people, and it was a far more delightful experience than I expected. Everyone was enthusiastic in their determination to make everyone feel welcome. All types were present. Those in cosplay and those in street clothes, those in brightly colored costumes and those in dark ones, those were were dressed morbidly and those were dressed pleasantly, those who spoke english and those who did not, those were loud and those were quiet, white, black, asian, straight, gay, male, female, transexual. All were accepted into the circle as participants of the ritual. I gave some damn fine hugs that day, and received my fair share too, and I couldn't keep from smiling. Though the dance was quick in its pace and you could go out and in and back outside the circle within a minute, everyone moved at an amiable pace and got to know one another through a word spoken here and there. The air was charged with a determination to love and celebrate one another.

Through it all, I couldn't help but think. And being me, my thoughts eventually took a theological turn. Again and again, I could feel myself nodding in approval as I thought to myself "there is a goodness at work here. Surely God is in it." And I progressively came to realize that the hug circle was more like a church than some churches. As a community, it perfectly represented the peace that is meant to be present in church when the Lord's peace is shared among the congregation. There was an incredible amount of diversity as well, and it did not matter in the least who you were; the only things of importance was that you brought no evil with you, that you were welcome, and that you could expect a warm hug from anyone at any moment. It amazed me that such a diverse crowd of people could exist in a small space so happily, and I realized that this is what church is meant to be. All children of God should feel welcome as members of the body of his son, no matter who they are. All types were present, including a silent and intimidating assassin who would politely bow before offering a quick but courteous embrace. There was also a child led by his father's hand. The circle drew all kinds, just as God draws all kinds.

There was an additional liturgy often invoked in the circle. Occasionally, one of the members in the center would shout "Hey, guess what," to which the rest would respond "What," followed by an additional "Hey guess what" from the crier, who would then make a statement or claim. Sometimes a person would declare "I need a hug," at which point the entire center of the circle would swarm them in a group hug. One of two chants would then begin: either "No way out" or "One of us." Occasionally a member would announce that they needed to leave, at which point the "No way out" chant would begin. The person was free to leave at any time, and people did come and go, but it was vigorously emphasized by the collective circle that it desired to keep the company of the person leaving.

The significance of this for me was that in the body of Christ, there is no power that can separate you from God's love. There is "no way out." At the same time, you are, and always will be "one of us." Taken alone, one of the chants might come across as either foreboding (no way out, we won't let you leave, you're trapped!) or in danger of sounding insipid (one of us, man, totally far out, man). But taken holistically, the chants communicated a powerful message to me, saying that the experience of having participated in the circle this year would be with me forever, that there was no way out of the experiences that made up my person. At the same time, I would always have the experience of being one of the group, of being included, of actively participating, of being welcome without any qualifiers at all.

It is entirely possible that some of my readers are reading into my analogy of the hug circle as church with a sense of abject horror. "Welcome without any qualifiers at all? What madness! Are we to let just anyone into our church? The foreigner, the atheist and the sexually ambiguous? Those who do not take the liturgy seriously? Those whose sin clings to them? Are we to let them in without any qualifiers at all?" To which I would respond, no, you would not let them in without any qualifiers at all, because admittance into the body of Christ has only one condition: that you willingly share in God's love through his son and give it freely to others. I find this condition an excellent one because by the word love, much is communicated. Love is grand in scope but uncomplicated. It desires and hopes all things that God wills, and God's will is peace and harmony, meaning that to share and give of God's love is to be an agent of renewal, that is, an agent of shalom. When the heart is fixed on God's love, it desires what God desires, and wills what he wills. And the more one takes love into account in every action, no matter how small, the more one realizes that God wills that love should flow into everything. Everyone in the world ought to be welcomed into church, so that they may learn of God's love in real and life changing ways. Christianity is not a set of abstractions, policies and dogmas; it is a living, breathing community charged with a sense of belonging together in a context of celebration, unity, and delight. That is the church, and that is also the hug circle.

"But what about rules? Rules need to be in place!" Indeed, the church is held together by rules. The hug circle would fall apart if everyone decided to abandon the rules and do as they each individually willed. The church has a code of conduct that is beyond contestation, not for the sake of rewarding some and excluding others, but for the sake of holding the community of believers together in real and tangible ways. God's word is law and sin is to be removed, but this happens through the economy of God's love as it descends on the congregation and continually winds its way through them. In other words, the hug circle represents a kind of perichoresis that is uniquely human. It is a dancing about where a hug is received, given, and then received again. It is self-sustaining, animated by the economy of hugging. It's like a heart beating blood into every vein, again and again. Life spreads like a wave, quiets for a moment, and then explodes into action again. God's love comes into the congregation, beginning a cycle of sharing that can go on a long time before dissipating. The rules of perichoresis are clear, and they must be willingly abided by for the economy of love to flow ceaselessly. Everyone is welcome in the church/welcome to play the game, but the there are rules and they must be observed. And within the context of these rules, what could there be to complain about when God's love is moving among his people? Why worry about how the rules of hug circle are constricting you when you are caught in a maelstrom of affection and warmth? No, the rules are not constricting. They are there not to dictate who may or may not participate in the economy of love, but rather to keep that economy flowing ceaselessly as it ought to.

Perhaps this all sounds too idyllic. I understand. In the case of the hug circle, all of the members were predisposed towards a functioning economy of love because of their shared nerdiness by being members at con. It is entirely possible that not everyone in Seattle would have been comfortable participating in the circle. Perhaps the circle is not meant for everyone. Perhaps everyone must seek out their own version of the economy of love, just as each Christian must seek the denomination and congregation that brings them closest to that sense of divine perichoresis with fellow humans. Perhaps this is more representative of what I ought to expect from the time following the resurrection, when all will be given new life and a new chance to know God's love. Indeed, it seems appropriate, now that I think about it, that Sakura Con is always held on Easter weekend. And though I regret not being able to attend a church service on Sunday, I still believe that I witnessed a hint of what can be expected on the day of resurrection. For while Easter is a day to celebrate and be in awe of Christ's death and resurrection, the hug circle was (for me) a celebration in awe of each person's own death and resurrection, and what that shared experience of resurrection will mean. There is a sense in which churches have lost, and need to regain, the hug circle's sense of vibrant joy and celebration. Churches could learn more than a few things from con culture, because con is all about drawing together disparate people through shared passion and love. And that's what church should be.

The dear friend I mentioned earlier had to leave Sunday to go back to Montana, far away from here. But we spoke about hope and memory; we had formed these memories, and there was no way out. They would always be part of us. Memory alone is not enough to live on, so we could keep those memories with the hope of one day making new ones. Hope and memory, I sometimes catch myself murmuring now. One of us, no way out. One day, the memories I formed in the hug circle, which hope for perfect realization in the healed earth God promised us, will be made new. Hope and memory. I keep the memory in hope. One of us, no way out.

And I will never forget how present God felt in that circle, because I am one of us, and there is no way out of that. I am eternally a member of the hug circle at Sakura Con 2015, just as I am eternally a member of God's family.

This is the Idiot, signing out.

Science in the face of the smallness of humanity

To be read with ambient cosmic horror music playing in the background. I recommend this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlDivIaiuMU

"I think, in the grand scale of things, humanity thinks too much of its own understanding. It only takes a little honesty and humility to admit that we are nothing in the face of the cosmos, which indefinitely stretches out into a strange nothingness. The more difficult admission is that there is no salvation in attempting to expand our knowledge of the universe, because dust mites, however clever, are nothing when faced with the alien corpse of a sperm whale in the darkness of the ocean depths. The vastness of existence is beyond our ability to comprehend. That having been said, science ought not to proceed with the assumption that everything can be known, because there will always be an unknown horizon for us to explore. Just when science thinks it has adequately described the universe, new phenomenon will throw our certainty into panicked disarray.

It's worth noting that science has a place in human life and a perfectly legitimate employment. People like the great Carl Sagan, who are humble in their exploration of the wondrous universe, are a credit to their disciplines. The benefits of science are obvious, and there is no reason to avoid learning more about the amazing world we occupy, though complete mastery may elude us.

But science is not infallible. A common mistake, I have experienced, is to place faith in the ability of science to make all matters clear. The mistake lies in the fact that science is equipped to be descriptive of the world, but not prescriptive. It has power to tell unravel the intimate workings of the natural world, but it has no power to make value judgements or inform one how one's life ought to be lived. Science is often misappropriated as a basis for philosophies or world views, many of which history looks back on with disgust. For example, it was once declared in the name of science that the white man was superior to all humanity, and that the sterilization of society's "undesirables" might benefit humanity's general situation. These prescriptive misappropriations of science contributed, as many know, to the evils of the Holocaust, which the Nazis considered the fulfillment of everything American scientists had described in their detailed writings on eugenics.

Additionally, science has a tendency to change. What is fact one year is made obsolete the next. Today's fact is yesterday's disproved theory. The most that science can consistently afford us is knowledge of what can be safely predicted in the occurrences of the natural world. But even then, it is mere prediction, not certainty. Nothing is set in stone. The very earth beneath our feet, and how we permit ourselves to think of it, is under constant revision. There is no solid footing left, no still moments, no rest. Humanity becomes tossed about on a sea of change. But despite the uncertainty of its position, humanity becomes somehow determined to think of its rocky boat as a firm foundation, as a describer of the world and as a prescriber of values.

I think it worth noting that the prerogative to make prescriptive claims on human life has more firmly rested with religion and faith. Theology and spirituality, while not exempt from the chaotic change of the other sciences, profess as their foundations a more or less stable axiom, that there is more to life than can be empirically shown. These disciplines, more preoccupied with the truths of poetry and literature, are no less valuable than the natural sciences. They may not have the descriptive power of science, but they engender in us the honesty and humility to know that human beings are finite and in desperate need of something more. In a sense, theology and spirituality are open to the strangeness of the world, its infinite incomprehensibility and impossible strangeness.

Of course, these traditionally religious areas of human life are, like science, not without grievous faults. All too often, scripture is shown to have petty human interests at heart. Wars convenient to those who stand to benefit are often started in the name of religion. Spiritual awareness can lead to zealotry and evil in the name of good. Wrongly construed, the "word of God" can be taken to be an endorsement of ethically reprehensible practices. Faith, while a reaction to something more than human, is all too often warped into something small, petty and human.
Ultimately, it isn't what humans do or write that is interesting to me. The failures of humanity, whether in matters of faith or science, are not difficult to affirm. I witness them every day, both in my actions and in the actions of others. No, whatever human beings derive on the basis of their own inspiration and capabilities, it does not matter; it holds no interest for me. What does hold interest for me is the intrusion of the alien and divine into human life, and the human reaction to that intrusion. Such a dynamic defies all the rules of our little existence. Could such a thing could ever happen? The sheer size of the world and what lies beyond it is so immense that the human mind simply cannot take it all in. The world is completely beyond us.

And for that reason, I call scientism an overrated fad. Faith in human epistemic and rational capabilities is far less compelling to me than faith in what is transcendent of those same human capabilities. That alien and unknowable otherness, which has made itself known in whispers and brutal death, intangibly calls every human mind to contemplation. It implants symbols into the mind. The cross is both a taunt and acknowledgement of death, a call to the madness of an eternal existence. I use the word "madness" quite deliberately, for love is mad, and God is love. And by the narrow definition of rationality and reason that we insignificant specs put forth as incontestable, God is utterly insane, for his love knows no rational limit, and he will love in ways that confound our tiny sense of ethicality or logic. What he sees and does goes utterly beyond what we can see and do, and so he appears from the human perspective as irredeemably insane. There is no single logos tying his behaviors down in ways that we humans can grasp. He is wholly other. We think ourselves sane, and he mad. But perhaps it is he who is sane and we who are mad. And who is to say what constitutes saneness or madness in an objective sense? Surely not we humans, whose eyes are so imperfectly dim. And yet God has shown himself willing to stretch out his hands and reveal the eldritch truth to those open to seeing.

Logic (and any paradigm of science that glorifies logic) is ultimately a tiny god to worship; I will never understand the people who appeal to it over the  overwhelming insanity and otherness of God.

Maybe Lovecraft had more insight into faith than he could have ever guessed."

This is the Idiot, signing out.

An Anti-Commercialist/Anti-Capitalist/Dostoyevskian/Schleiermachian Sermon

Dostoyevsky once wrote in Brothers Karamazov about people subjecting themselves to powers, saying "We know nothing of guilt or sin, only hunger. Make us your slaves, only feed us." I thought to myself how that sort of picture lends itself to an understanding of the book of Revelation and the last days, when Satan as antichrist will supposedly be given free reign to set himself up as an idol to which people will subject themselves. I thought that you don't really need Satan roaming free in the last days for this kind of subjection to happen. Allow me to explain.

If Satan were to appear and proclaim (in whatever flowery, deceptive language he wishes) "I am your Lord now. Worship me, and I will sate your hunger," that would be superfluous. We already have idols today for that very purpose. I thought to myself, that's what capitalism in a pluralist society already is. It's a society without guilt but with an emphasized sense of hunger. I thought to myself that in the last days, if they are to come, we won't be subjected to Satan as some foreign power coming into the world, enslaving us through our dominant sense of hunger. That can't be the case, because that very thing has already happened. We are already enslaved by powers through our dominant sense of hunger. In the last days, we will be subjected to sinful systems that we ourselves founded, progressed and allowed to mature. Schleiermacher would no doubt agree. After all, he wrote (contra to Augustine) that sin is not some disease passed down in some meta-biological form, but a power that propagates itself through sinful social structures. That's how sin is passed down, in social/cultural structures that are themselves sinful.

It should be noted at this point that in certain conditions (like capitalism, for example) where hunger is the sole driving motivation for living, sin flourishes. The downward spiral of all societies motivated by hunger features degradation of the worst sort. The Capital in the Hunger Games closely resembles the disgusting affluence of late Rome, and to a slightly lesser degree, the disgusting affluence of today in the capitalist West. In both cases, hunger is the power at work. Doesn't it seem familiar? "Make us your slaves, only feed us." Isn't it interesting that the affluent Capital citizens are never without something to eat, and yet they live in daily craving for novelty, new trends to follow, new Tributes to cheer for in the Games? Isn't it interesting that the modern West knows nothing of real physical hunger, and yet it lives in an environment where hunger is constantly emphasized? Further, isn't it interesting that the trend of the century thus far is the trading of freedom for security and convenience? Dostoyevsky anticipated this as well. We hunger for product and convenience in equal measure, and our idols, embedded in the social and cultural order that we daily affirm, bend over backwards to make us promises of sating our hunger. "Make us your slaves, only feed us."

This is not to say that hunger is in any sense wrong. My body needs sustenance, so I feed it, and that is good. I hunger for non-physical things like justice and peace, and that is good. I personally hunger for the world God has promised, where justice and peace are perfect, and all needs are met. This is ultimately no different from the kind of hunger we experience in our culture. The only difference is that where I look to God as a perfect authority to sate my hunger, commercialist culture looks to manmade products and systems to sate hunger. "Buy this product and you will be happy." That's the condensed message of all commercialism. Strange that even though we are constantly promised that our hunger can end, our hunger persists, year after year. We are ignorant of our own all-pervading hunger. We think ourselves well fed, and yet our daily lives depend on sating a never ending hunger.

That is what we will bow to in the last days. Not to Satan establishing his power, but to the sinful powers we have already subjected ourselves to. The end will find humanity looking to itself for salvation, like an emaciated creature begging its own reflection to feed it.

Huh. Might need work. Interesting, though.

This is the Idiot, signing out.

What I think about in the shower

A lot has been going on in the world lately, particularly regarding the relationship between violence and what we commonly call "religion." Some have interpreted their faiths in terms of commands from God, specifically, commands to violence, which is opposed to peaceful communion. This got me thinking.

One night, after a particularly painful massage and a relaxing shower, I had an epiphany. All genuine traditions of piety and belief (which most today problematically refer to as "religions") historically began not in the ethical mode, but in the relational. One calls out to the Divine (by whatever name), just like a child calling out to a parent. The Divine responds, and a relationship develops, one which boils over into the lives of others, so that the relationship grows into a communal act as well as a personal one. Genuine traditions of piety and belief have always been this way.

The ethical concerns itself with what an individual ought to do in order to live well, so what does an ethic of faith look like? What have the faithful been commanded to do? Given that true traditions of piety and belief sprang from the relational mode, an ethic of faith is less concerned with prescribing the minutia of day to day living as it is with opening individuals to an active awareness of the fundamental nature of the relational mode. It is not "Thou shalt" and "Thou shalt not" so much as it is "Thou shalt be with me and with thine fellow creatures and with thine world, and what shall define that be-ing will be love." We were relational beings before we were ethical ones. An ethic of faith is a call to communion, a call to a deepening awareness of one's relation to the Divine, one's relation to one's neighbor, and one's relation to one's world. When faith finds itself reduced to petty legalism, or when it becomes defined strictly in terms of orthodoxy to the point of neglecting orthopraxy and communion, then whatever ethic faith lays claim to loses its legitimacy.

It really is just like they always said to me growing up; faith is about relationship, and that is something this world consistently demonstrates it is incapable of realizing. When the mountains of mankind at last make themselves humble before God, their submission will coincide with the realization that the sole command God issued them was at the heart of their greatest yearning, which is to call out and to be responded to, to be with, and to be with in love. God's command for each life is this: "Thou shalt love in communion."

“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Matthew 22:36-40

Old Notes from Continental Philosophy class

I was going through some old notes from my Continental Philosophy class (which was almost exclusively Heidegger studies). Found this towards the end, in the retrospective section. Some of it was edited to make a concise point, some of it was my own addition. But I think I am being true to what my professor intended me to understand.

"What does a Christian metaphysical ontic look like? Well, the following is just one version, one positive possibility on the horizon of the Continental tradition, one which is a radical picture of Christian facticity. It asks, what is at the root of the Christian faith? The answer is the Gospel, good news, hope. It's about unconditional love, which is treating a person as the person that you cannot yet see: this requires believing in what you cannot yet see, which is difficult because we cannot see finished products as finite beings. It all comes out of the future toward the past, and it requires that we believe, to some extent, in what is yet invisible to us, so that we can be better stewards of the visible. In short, a Christian metaphysical ontic is a call to vigilantly conform to the life of Christ, despite our finitude and inability to see beyond what is given to us in being.

Why is this call to conform "Good News?" Because it is intentional authenticity. Jesus is a dismantler of unjust systems. His life shows that deconstruction is a positive movement, one that works toward transformation. The Great Commission is about showing others how to live, and it requires intimacy (washing of feet, the shared purse, etc).

Furthermore, his life shows that nothing in your present can outstrip who you are becoming. For when you are full, there is the illusion that you are complete, but you need to be empty to see what truly fulfills you. Could it be that you must lose your life in order to gain it, just as he said? The wealthy and the Pharisees were not hated by Christ: his rejection of their "fullness" was a gift, an opportunity to see what truly fulfills them as finite beings. It's hard to see transcendence when you are full, when you believe that you have walked the road to completion. Christ's life isn't about the position of being full, of thinking that you have reached the end of a journey; it is about the path of always living towards what has been promised but cannot yet be grasped. It's a path to be eternally walked. And the best part is that God himself has joined us on this path, an eternal companion on an eternal road of being."